Contact management systems, such as call center systems, typically have various real-time capabilities for monitoring the performance of their software and hardware. In general, however, these abilities are restricted to notifying an administrator of the occurrence of certain events and errors. These events have to be specified ahead of time when the system is configured. As a result, the monitoring capabilities are inflexible and may fail to detect many significant problems.
For example, Patent Application Publication No. US2003/0135382 (Marejka) describes a self-monitoring system, which monitors parameters and transmits an event message when parameters cross thresholds. Such event messages are sent to a service provider, and determine if an alarm should be generated. During system operation, data is collected periodically, and new monitoring data is compared to recently stored monitoring data to identify events and alarms.
Marejka further describes that the service provider transmits monitoring interfaces to a customer that include current status, concurrently with indicators of prior operating states (e.g., unkeyed alarm indicators). For monitored elements, a multi-tier arrangement divides operating status into three operating ranges (e.g., normal, non-critical, and critical), with current status displayed on the monitoring interfaces on a domain, system, element and component basis. It should be noted that the customer modifies the thresholds and establishes alarm notification criteria used in the system.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,683,947 (Roelle) further describes a system to monitor a call center. The system receives call center data, and determines respective values for a number of measures, based on the call center data. A determination of compliance description is made for each of the number of measures, and an indicator is presented in association with each of the number of measures. The indicator corresponds to a compliance description determined by the measurer.